These Dreams

I awoke this morning, haunted by a dream. I was certain that I'd had this dream before. I was uncomfortably panicked and desperately grasped at the waking threads of what the dream was about before I lost them in the madness of the day.

In the dream, I am living in my house, which was not exactly like this house, but I knew it was home. In the dream, I was frantically trying to put plastic on all the windows of the house to keep the cold out, and I sent the kids to gather fire wood and stack it everywhere we could. I also ran through checklists of supplies, including matches and water and oil lamps. You see there was about to be a blizzard.

For my friends who haven't lived in Fresno and are possibly unfamiliar with the climate here, let me just tell you, there are NO blizzards in Fresno. In fact, I've only seen snow here twice in the 18 years I've lived here, and both times, it looked like someone sprinkled powdered sugar on the ground. It melted as fast as it landed.

So back to my blizzard preparations. I remember feeling anxious. And making all of these preparations was hard, navigating the ladders was hard, and carrying heavy things was hard, because, after all, I was pregnant.

Again...no. In the dream I kept thinking, there's no way I'm pregnant! No biological way whatsoever, yet my tummy was round, my hips ached, and I had sciatic pain shooting down my leg. I felt protective of my baby and worried that something would go wrong. I felt an urgent need to put everything right, do everything perfectly and I felt fear that I wouldn't get it done in time as I heard the radio blasting out storm updates.

Then I woke up.

I had a counselor who told me once that most of us can figure out our dreams if we take an image or an idea from our dream and ask ourselves what we associate that with. That's exactly what I've done.

As near as I can tell, I'm afraid (cold). I feel like things are beyond my control (storm). I'm uncertain about what the future holds (preparations/storm), and I am trying to carry out something that is very important to me (pregnancy). I feel like everything is at risk and I feel foolish at times (awkwardness, roundness). I'm still gathering information and looking for signs (windows, radio).

So is this just a dream about trying to finish my degree? My rush against diminishing resources and time itself to try to bring to pass what seems impossible in my life? My struggle to trust the Lord with my financial future while I carry out what he has told me is possible if I will have faith? I'm still pondering the layers of meaning.

In the meantime, I find it curious that Kelly also had a dream on the same night about snow. Hm.

Maybe a snowstorm is coming after all?